Where are the Morals?

[Harris]

I thought you were pretending to sound scientific before by talking about meiosis and mitosis, now you have gone back to believing the diversity of humanity is due to them being made by different coloured clay.

It could just be that clay was used to create things in lots of cultures and that's why god created man from clay in many primitive myths.

Each myth is not distorted, they're just fictional, created by locals and so therefore reflect the mentality of the locals.

Notice how each nation had a prophet that was speaking the true message of Islam, some of them remembered the bit in which they were made from clay, but most of them forgot about the specific rules of Islam. And then there were others who made their own completely non related creation stories completely independent of Islam too.

Superstitious drug dealers will believe in a god of drug dealing, superstitious people living near the nile will believe in a god of nile. Superstitious people living near clay will make myths about clay. That's the only connection here.

I can give you more myths on “creation of man from clay” originated in many diversified nations.

Interesting point is, as if NATURAL SELECTION has worked out “naturally” different versions of all these mystical stories on “creation of man from clay” and spread them in all nations of the world by means of blind, random, and unguided process.

And you also believe biologists believe in evolution because of conjecture.

You haven't still haven't convinced me yet that it's more logical that the diversity of mankind is due to different clay being used during our creation. I still believe in evolution and natural selection. I feel the compulsion to side with the professional biologists and paleontologists and such. Rather than the ancient clay myths.

Currently there is no general agreement among biologists on the adaptive function of sex.

Meiosis, a key stage of the sexual cycle, involves close pairing and physical recombination and information exchange between homologous chromosomes ordinarily derived from two different parents. During meiosis, the members of each chromosome pair come together and the pairing partners exchange segments. Old combinations of alleles that were linked and inherited together are broken up, and new combinations are formed. Since CROSSING-OVER can occur at different sites in different germ cells, this process of recombination generates an almost limitless amount of variation in the gametes.

NATURAL SELECTION has no defence to counter this exhaustive yet precise process of meiosis. The adaptive function of sex remains, today, one of the major unsolved problems in biology.

If you remember, I have written whole article over evolution. You can go back and read that article and all of its critiques and responses.

You need to correct your list. Hitler was a practicing Catholic. Interestingly, he identified with a militaristic view of "Jesus". He admired JC's extreme reaction with the moneylenders in the temple.

Hitler was fighting for Nazism not for Christianity. Nazism held racial theories based upon the belief of the existence of an Aryan master race that was believed to be superior to all other races.

Hitler was following Darwinian Theory in the attempt to create supreme German race. He wrote:

"In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species' health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher development."
Mein Kampf
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html

In fact, Nazis were on the path of Naturalism in their struggle to make a supreme race.

Both Nazi and atheist count themselves as supreme beings and this superiority complex leads them to arrogant behaviour. They treat other people as if they are bitches. Their rational objective was to get rid of bitches from the community. Even today, secular governments are treating Muslim as bitches based on power, which is a perfect example of what superiority complex and arrogance can do.

Also, this is a tired argument, as the Communist ideal is used as a guise. Communism will never come about and is never meant to. It is just totalitarian regime holding the country in "escrow" til a day when Communism takes effect. That day just never comes. Equating atheism with a totalitarian regime is useless.

Yes, atheism is a tenet of communism.

In communism, you are taught to regard the state as the greatest good, as the source of all help and wisdom. You regard the community as the highest moral good.

If you believe in God, that is outside the state-controlled community, outside the system, and that makes you harder to control!

http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_communism

Harris Wrote: In contrast to atheism, religion give definite laws for a moral life.

They do not. Case in point. "Lo tirtzack" of Ten Commandment fame. (Thou Shalt Not Kill) is incorrectly translated. It means "Thou Shalt Not Kill Anything Whatsoever" and was a dietary edict. Followers of Moses were fruitarian. Why the change?

Also, "wicked" in the bible did not mean evil. People who did not follow the Torah were called wicked. Do you follow the Torah? Why the CHANGE?

Although I can plainly answer all of your questions but I will not do so and leave them for Jews and Christians.

If anything in Quran or Hadith trouble you then let me know about that and I will try my best to give you satisfactory explanation.

By the way I agree that atheists are barbaric, it's pretty much human nature to be that way.

Atheists are often pedophiles, rapists, murderous dictators, killers of disabled baby seals and so on.

But this is all just human nature.

I'd say my problem with religion on an ethical level (even though I don't see the point in arguing on an ethical level) would be that atheists can improve on what they believe.

The argument of improvement is immaterial here, as atheism does not give any moral standards for building and improving moral values.

A Muslim can never say anything Muhammad ever did was wrong, because the quran says everything Muhammad did was perfect.

If Muhammad married a 9 year old, that's fine. As long as you obey all the rules of the quran and you can marry a girl if she's started puberty and agrees to the marriage.

Aisha was not the only woman who has a historical significance and who was married at a young age.

King John of England married 12-year-old Isabella of Angoulême.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_of_Angoul%C3%AAme

Eldest grandson of the Sun King, Duke of Bourgogne married 12 year old Marie Adelaide of Savoy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Ad%C3...e_of_Savoy

Lady Margaret Beaufort WIDOWED at the age of THIRTEEN, three months before the birth of her only child.
http://www.historytoday.com/michael-jone...t-beaufort
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Be..._and_Derby

Joan of France married at the age of 12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Fra...s_of_Berry

Anne de Mowbray Spouse of Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York DIED AT THE AGE OF 8.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_de_Mow...of_Norfolk

In her book “The Lives of Muhammad” Kecia Ali wrote:

"Accusations of lust and sensuality were a regular feature of medieval attacks on the prophet's character and, by extension, on the authenticity of Islam."

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lives-Muhammad...0674050606
http://www.bu.edu/religion/faculty/bios/kecia-ali/

So calling paedophile to a person who legally married a young girl by the consent and willingness of her parents, relatives, and community members is quite absurd. No one objected that marriage including the enemies of Prophet because such marriages were widely practiced at the time of Prophet Mohammad

Can you say that parents of all those girls, I have mentioned above including Aisha, were "Child Molesters" because they had given their daughters as legal wives in their young ages?

No sexual abuse victim had ever spoken positively of her attacker.

In hundreds of her narrations, Aisha had never shown her displeasure about this marriage. On the contrary, she had spoken dearly of the Prophet. Her narrations exhibits the innocence of the marriage and of the impeccable character of her husband. Given the trust enjoyed by her by the virtue of her relationship with Prophet Mohammad, she could have unleashed a vengeful attack against him by attributing horrendous words or deeds to him if indeed she was a victim of his supposed lust and destroyed both the Prophet and Islam.

That marriage in fact was a great blessing for all Muslims ever since. Because after the death of Prophet Mohammad, Aisha became one of the most accurate source of Islamic laws, especially on the matters of cleanliness, spouse relations, and other family related issues due to her authentic narrations.

Arwa Bin Zubair says,

“I did not find anyone more proficient (than Aisha) in the knowledge of the Holy Quran, the Commandments of Halal (lawful) and Haram (prohibited), Ilmul-Ansab and Arabic poetry. That is why, even senior companions of the Prophet used to consult Aisha in resolving intricate issues”.
Page 26
Jala-ul-Afham Vol.2
Ibn Qaiyem and Ibn Sa’ad


Abu Musa al-Ashari says:

“Never had we (the companions) any difficulty for the solution of which we approached Aisha and did not get some useful information from her”.
Page 163
Sirat-I-Aisha
On the authority of Trimidhi

Some views of western scholars:

"These specific references to the bride's age reinforce Aisha's pre-menarcheal status and, implicitly, her virginity."
Page 40
Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: the Legacy of A'isha bint Abi Bakr
Denise Spellberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Spellberg

“Marriages between an older man and a young girl were customary among the Bedouins, Muhammad's marriage would not have been considered improper by his contemporaries.”
Pages 34 – 35
Islam: The Basics
Colin Turner
https://www.dur.ac.uk/sgia/profiles/?mode=staff&id=494

“There was no impropriety in Muhammad's marriage to Aisha. Marriages conducted in absentia to seal an alliance were often contracted at this time between adults and minors who were even younger than Aisha. This practice continued in Europe well into the early modern period.”
Page 167
Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time
Karen Armstrong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Armstrong

Atheists can do this too, in fact they don't have to marry the girl they can rape the girl, kill her, then cut the body up and send the limbs to the parents.

Here I believe that atheist is vulnerable to all immoral acts due to lack of morality in atheism. Uncontrollable personal desires have power to structure, control and derive personal preferences, which in general are very much prone to wickedness. I have already given plentiful example for the validation of my views.

But atheists can also say "No, it's not right to marry a girl that young, she should probably finish her education and mature properly"

Rapist who “rape the girl, kill her, then cut the body up, and send the limbs to the parents” is a retarded person who has no brain for saying:

"No, it's not right to marry a girl that young, she should probably finish her education and mature properly"

A muslim can't say this because Muhammad did it, he's the perfect model for humanity, end of argument.

You are spot on. If you knew the reality of Prophet Mohammad then that knowledge would never let you argue against him.

You don't get to pass beyond 7th century values.

No matter whether man lives in a cave or walks on the moon, the principle senses of all people are same. Advances in science, literature, and philosophy cannot modify primal senses, feelings, and emotions. Those consistent senses, feelings, and emotions are the objective of Islamic teachings. The teachings of Quran and Prophet Mohammad will remain perfectly valid until the day of Armageddon.

This becomes even worse if you're a muslim and you believe Muhammad disliked the jews and beheaded infidels but not all Muslims believe these things.

You guys love conspiracies. Better, you first study history of Islam and then talk with me.

What is the punishment of High Treason in US?
http://www.nytimes.com/1861/01/25/news/t...tates.html


Jews breached the treaty, which they had made with Muslims to protect Medina in case pagans of Mecca attack Medina. At Battle of the Trench, Jews betrayed Muslims by giving pagans a path through their region in Madina so the pagans can attack and crush Muslims from the back at the occasion when complete attention of Muslims was on the activities of enemy pagans at the Front. That was the punishment for HIGH TREASON what Jews of Madina had received.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banu_Qurayza
Post: #83

Why not have an open relationship instead?

If you were a Muslim (which I doubt) then most probably you left Islam to have free sex. Free sex is one of the major temptation that causes theist to become an atheist.

16:07

Human chromosome 2, Endogenous retrovirals, phylogenetic and morphological similarities, and a comprehensive fossil record showing the evolution of man from primate ancestors. That was easy, and you don't know what any of those words mean.

Can you explain MEIOSIS and ADAPTIVE FUNCTION of sex in terms of Natural Selection?

I don't think you even really know what you're talking about anymore.

It seems that article troubled you seriously. Let me simplify things for you in my own words.

Suppose there are 5% atheist in total population of US. That means in the total population we have 5 atheists and 95 people of other faiths. I hope you have understood this point.

5 compare to 95 is substantially a small number and intuitively obvious on its face however, if you exhibit 5 prisoners out of 100 to manifest prodigious morality of atheists compare to theists then this is by large a MISREPRESENTATION.

To twist the minds of naïve people, atheists throwing those unauthentic small numbers by camouflaging the actual size of atheist population in the total population of the country.

The only difference is the only salient difference: one is a theist while the other is an atheist. It's not very honest to redefine theists who don't meet your standards as 'pretty much the same as atheists'.

A person who belongs to some religious group but does not care whether god exists or not is in fact an atheist.

Harris Wrote: Although atheism fails to answer this dilemma, it sternly criticise morals based on religion by undermining the fact that religion is the only institute in the entire human history that successfully delivered and implemented efficient rules for a moral life.

Theism fails to answer this dilemma as well. That's because theism and atheism are differing opinions on a topic, not moral systems. If you care at all about comparing apples to apples, maybe you should be addressing humanism instead of atheism.

Religion gives specific knowledge about good and bad therefore it is not like atheism that faces dilemma of distinguishing between what is good and what is bad. Even the belief that God is the creator of everything is sufficient to give a distinction between good and bad.

No matter how many times we tell you that most atheists don't have a belief in the non-existence of God, it doesn't sink in, and you keep bringing it up.

You say you do not believe in the existence of God or you believe that there is no god in both cases, the meaning is same and that is “NO GOD.”

If you say God does not exist, therefore, the term “belief” is irrelevant then that is the obvious evidence of your lack of consideration by all epistemological definitions. That shows your intellectual level is narrowed to the level of your primal senses.

The logical structure of our mind is:

Sense
Experience
Memory
Knowledge
Logic
True or false
Reason
Belief

If you keep yourself up to the level of primal senses, simply because you think you do not need knowledge, logic, and reason more than the fulfilment of your primal needs for joy, pleasure, and satisfaction then that would hold you back from reaching the level of universal truth and belief. To reach the level of universal truth, sacrifice of materialistic desires is mandatory.

Harris Wrote: Conversely, atheism has nothing to offer to fill this moral gap.

Neither does mere theism.

Atheism provokes relativism. Yesterday, homosexuality was an immoral and abnormal act but today it is a permissible act on consensus and perhaps tomorrow it would be inescapable.

Whereas Islam offers consistent universal laws. These laws never change with the changing trends of cultures. If homosexuality was abandoned yesterday, it is abandon today and it will be abandoned tomorrow as an unnatural, immoral and sinful act. There are no gaps in Islam because commandments of Quran are unfailing.

“Because Allah will never change the grace which He hath bestowed on a people until they change what is in their (own) souls: and verily Allah is He Who heareth and knoweth (all things).”
Al Anfaal (8)
-Verse 53-

“The word of thy Lord doth find its fulfilment in truth and in justice: None can change His words: for He is the one who heareth and knoweth all.”
Al An'am (6)
-Verse 115-

“If anyone changes the bequest after hearing it, the guilt shall be on those who make the change. For Allah hears and knows (All things).”
Al Baqarah (2)
-Verse 181-

"Obey your evolutionary instincts,"
"Respect your brain chemistry," or
"Follow your mental wirings"

Atheism doesn't say any of that. Your continuous avoidance of our actual worldviews in favor of trying to make atheism one smacks of rhetorical dishonesty.

Atheists throwing these and other similar phrases on the faces of religious people quiet often. I am not the one who is inventing these phrases.

Some similar expressions:

“THE BRAIN with which you are UNDERSTANDING my words is an array of some ten million kiloneurones. Many of these billions of nerve cells have each more than a thousand 'electric wires' connecting them to other neurones.”
Page XIII
The Blind Watchmaker
Richard Dawkins

“Human thoughts and emotions emerge from exceedingly complex interconnections of PHYSICAL ENTITIES within the brain. An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles”
Page 14
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins


“The human brain runs first-class SIMULATION SOFTWARE.”
Page 88
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins

The prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for, is materialism: there is only one sort of stuff, namely matter — the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology — and the MIND IS SOMEHOW NOTHING BUT A PHYSICAL PHENOMENON. In short, the mind is THE BRAIN. According to the materialists, we can (in principle!) account for EVERY MENTAL PHENOMENON using the same physical principles, laws, and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity, continental drift, photosynthesis, reproduction, nutrition, and growth.
Chapter: Why Dualism Is Forlorn
Consciousness Explained
Daniel C. Dennett

Neither does theism. Neither does plumbing. You're trying to get blood from a turnip if you're trying to derive a moral system from the sole fact of belief or disbelief in there being at least one real supernatural deity.

Actually, you are trying to distort my words. In my articles and responses, I usually use word religion in place of word theism. I am precisely upholding ISLAM.

Can you point out where in the defintion the universe being indifferent undermines morality? What does morality have to do with how things that aren't moral agents behave?
mo•ral•i•ty/məˈralədē/
noun
principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

Address this question to Dawkins.

“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

As that unhappy poet A. E. Housman put it:
For Nature, heartless, witless Nature Will neither care nor know.

DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. AND WE DANCE TO ITS MUSIC.

Page 133
River out of Eden
Richard Dawkins

You consider power mad and paranoid dictators rational? I disagree.

No power mad and paranoid dictator, like Stalin, Lenin, Mao, etc. was a sensible person (I agree) however, those power mad and paranoid dictators and all their supporters were atheists. The blame goes on to atheism for making them immoral and irrational beasts.

I have already expressed my views that out of 7 billion people, Atheist have not yet reached even 200 million mark. This fact is enough to state that atheism is irrational, illogical, and goes against the nature of man.

Harris Wrote: So, insofar as Ethical Rational justification uses the motivation to realize rational plan of life, any rational plan of life, Ethical Rationalism would, at least in some instances, legitimize immoral rational plan of life.

Well, at least ethical rationalism is a basis for morality an atheist might hold, so you've finally brought up something that isn't a straw man. Even someone who isn't an ethical rationalist (probably most atheists here) should be able to discuss it intelligently, so this is progress. Of course the point of rational ethics isn't developing a 'rational plan of life', it's deriving moral principles through reason, and the flaw in it isn't that it results in a Stalin (no sign of him being an ethical rationalist), but that it doesn't take the emotional dimension of ethics into account. Sentiment plays a major role in ethics that can't be ignored.

Manmade laws lead humanity to relativism. There are no universal values in atheism which in fact leads humanity to dictatorship where the powerful has right to impose his desired laws over the feeble. Atheism pushes people to the law of jungle where the feeble should suffer for the enjoyment of the powerful.

Religions like Aztec polytheism, which involved a LOT of human sacrifices, or religions like Moloch worship that involved burning live babies? I think you might want to find a better word to convey your case than 'religion'. Not to mention that at least from an anthropological point of view, a religion can be atheistic.

I am not worried about Polytheism, Buddhism (atheistic religion), Paganism, Animism, Pantheism, totalitarianism and of course Atheism. In Quran, I find logical answers to every concern relevant to human life.

Quran teaches that fornication, adultery, incest (based on consensus or not), homosexuality, alcoholism, gambling, disrespect to elder parents, disrespect to neighbours, meanness ... are the acts which are illogical, irrational, and against nature of man and therefore sins. I committedly agree with all that.

A religion's morality seems to be entirely relative to the moral practices of the culture it originated in modified by the moral practices of the culture in which it is currently being followed.

Islam is based on standards set by God, which are not conditional to cultural customs. Therefore, if homosexuality and adultery were sins yesterday, they are sins today and they will be sins tomorrow regardless of changing trends of influential cultures.

Religious activity extends, of course, well beyond the range of specifically moral concerns. Religious scholars have typically insisted, however, that religious teachings provide the larger context in which the claims of morality find their proper place.

And what religion it is doesn't matter?

In today’s world, other than Quran, all scriptures are corrupted versions of their originals. Therefore, any religion that is based on corrupted scripture classified as UNRELIABLE.

Not every religion addresses an afterlife. And that doesn't sound like a reason not to be moral.

I believe every religion in today’s world evolved from one single religion by means of concoctions and corruptions. According to Quran that first religion was:

“Submission of self to the will of God.”

Today, we call that religion Islam. Why Islam is authentic religion because Quran is not a corrupted and concocted scripture, which is a miracle in itself. Quran is all about accountability in the afterlife.

I'd like to see some statistics that support that, else religious narratives being helpful to drive moral behavior is a mere assertion.

Study life of Prophet Mohammad, life of his close companions, and spouses. That study would give you sufficient examples on how these pioneers had demolished unethical norms in different societies with the help of universal commandments of Quran.

Neither mere theism nor mere atheism provide any model at all for moral conduct. They are each an opinion, nothing more.

As I said earlier, I never talked about atheism vs. theism. You can target Islam, if you wish, instead of chasing theism. It would be precise and to the point.

Harris Wrote: Hence, atheists are left with no other choice than to peek into religion in pursuit of moral guidance.

Funny, religions seem to be haltingly catching up to humanist moral standards.

John N Gray
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gray_(philosopher)


An atheist, thinks that Humanism is nothing more than an empty figure of speech – a secular version of theism in which atheists have replaced the idea of God’s providence with a conviction about the nature of progress.

On the Nature of Progress, he said:

“The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge. The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge not even in the long run.”

John N. Gray: "Joseph Conrad, Our Contemporary," from Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions (2004)

“To affirm that humans thrive in many different ways is not to deny that there are universal human values. Nor is it to reject the claim that there should be universal human rights. It is to deny that universal values can only be fully realized in a universal regime. Human rights can be respected in a variety of regimes, liberal and otherwise. Universal human rights are not an ideal constitution for a single regime throughout the world, but a set of minimum standards for peaceful coexistence among regimes that will always remain different.”
Page 21
Two Faces of Liberalism
John N. Gray

Harris Wrote: There is no academy in the secular world that gives awareness on morals in a scientific way.

Is there one in the nonsecular world?

Study Quran and Hadith in any renowned Madrassa.

Most Western religions have been riding on the backs of secular Greek moral philosophers for thousands of years.

And, all those Secular Greeks were riding on the backs of deities just like secular governments in contemporary world are riding on the backs of Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

Atheism is not a word that's properly capitalized except at the beginning of a sentence or as part of the name of an organization. No atheist has the authority to speak for all of us.

That makes the difference.

“No atheist has the authority to speak for all of us,” because there are no universal standards in atheism. Every atheist has his own fabricated morals independent of others so why to listen other.